McCaul: Chechen rebels fierce

4/21/13 10:20 AM EDT

The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee says rebels from Chechnya are “some of the fiercest jihadist warriors out there.”

Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas) said on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday that he believed Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the deceased suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing, received training while visiting Russia and then became radicalized.

“The tools of trade, of warfare for All Qeada are precisely what he built, this pressure-cooker device,” McCaul told host Candy Crowley. “There were reports that they had suicide vests on, you don’t learn that overnight.”

McCaul also related that one of his constituents’ son was killed in Iraq by Chechen rebels.

“My job and my obligation as chairman of homeland security is to see what if anything went wrong and how we can prevent that in the future,” he said.